


pregame: questioning everything

by hecleretical



Series: pregame [1]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Baltimore Crabs (Blaseball Team), Gen, aww look he really does care!, background/mentioned other crabs players, canon typical death by umpire, ghost character, sutton dreamy's blood type is psychic, with several mentions of combs duende in particular, you could describe this fic as.........the calm before the storm [hysterical laughter]
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hecleretical/pseuds/hecleretical
Summary: "Perfect Blaseball Player", it's been pointed out in interviews, might be a bit of a stretch. Her record isn't that great. She's got a mere two and a half stars in batting. Certainly she can't run bases or catch flyouts the way her team can. But there's one thing that Combs knew that nobody else did, and that's why Sutton Dreamy is the best player in blaseball. In the Evil League, in the Wild High, anywhere.or, sutton dreamy takes off her night vision goggles.
Relationships: Sutton Dreamy & Tillman Henderson
Series: pregame [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968154
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	pregame: questioning everything

Sutton Dreamy likes her Night-Vision Goggles. After winning them in the Election she's taken to wearing them everywhere, under some heavy ribbing from the team. Why use them when there's not an eclipse? Those things really going to make you see better in peanuts? Even the rookie who'd showed up in the locker room after Tilly-- even Silvaire. Has picked up that it's weird.

She's taken to wearing them all the time since Tilly left.

She knows how she was born. Combs Duende, way back when blaseball was just a twinkle in the Gods' eye, had been asked to sit down as part of a team-building exercise and draw the perfect blaseball player. Next thing she knew there she was, bat in hand, the Crabs-- Tilly, Winnie, Nora, and Combs-- all staring up back at her. She'd been drafted immediately.

"Perfect Blaseball Player", it's been pointed out in interviews, might be a bit of a stretch. Her record isn't that great. She's got a mere two and a half stars in batting. Certainly she can't run bases or catch flyouts the way her team can. But there's one thing that Combs knew that nobody else did, and that's why Sutton Dreamy is the best player in blaseball. In the Evil League, in the Wild High, anywhere.

Sutton Dreamy sees dreams.

Not precognition, like Luis Acevedo's Eye of Light, that uncanny ability they have to get walks and hit singles. Not a stoner prophet like Brock, always foreseeing the Great Crab Reckoning. But dreams, superpositions, imposed on the world from planes Even More Immaterial, things that could be, things that probably won't, echoes, waking visions, alternate realities, ghosts. Ghosts. Ghosts, like Combs Duende, and Nora Perez, sometimes. People who've been incinerated, or people in the Shadows, like that scruffy Garages pitcher she sees lurking around the bullpen when they go to Seattle. But mostly just Combs, until recently-- not even giving her advice. Just there, just smiling at her, her poor dead teammate. 

Ghosts. Like Combs Duende. Ghosts like Tilly Henderson.

You'd think Night Vision Goggles wouldn't help with it, but they make it better. Sutton has never worn glasses-- as the perfect blaseball player she has 20/20 vision-- but residents of Montgomery County have, so the best way she can describe it is the way Monty does. It's like wearing glasses that have the wrong prescription, just a little too strong. The Night Vision Goggles were designed for someone who couldn't see the planes Even More Immaterial, someone really shortsighted. They're designed to let you do the same thing Sutton does naturally. When she wears them, everything's just too blurry, and all the dreams and double-images get even more doubled. Oddly, that helps drown it out. Aside from telling what the weather's going to be like at the next game, she can barely see anything.

Which is good. Because Tillman Henderson is there.

It's not that she doesn't like Tilly-- she does. Did. Does? It's just, in life, he could be so much. His vape always smelled up everything, and his smack talk from shortstop distracted her in the middle of games, and more than anything, he could be really, really mad. Like mad over stupid things. She can't even imagine how mad he must be that they let him get incinerated.

So it's that-- guilt, she supposes? Or fear at what he might say? That keeps her goggles on, even more than when she'd just gotten them and thought they were neat as hell. With Combs, sometimes it'd been comforting, in a bittersweet way. She'd loved them. She'd loved Tilly too, but he just feels like a rebuke.

Like an omen.

Only there's one thing Sutton Dreamy can't quite figure out. Which is that, let's be real, wouldn't he have known? Nobody, and I mean nobody, argues with an umpire in the middle of an eclipse. Even he'd known that. So why say those fateful last words-- "What are you gonna do, incinerate me?"-- when to do so wouldn't even be tempting fate, more like giving it an explicit order and due date? It's something she comes back to, again and again, before a game.

She chews on it. She lets it get in her head. She lets it make her miss the ball and strike out looking. (She's always felt she doesn't have the best pregame, in terms of getting her head in the zone.) But that fear, that guilt, it holds her back. It keeps her goggles on.

And it's not until Day 99-- feedback, she can already feel in her bones, and against the Jazz Hands-- that Sutton Dreamy waits until the locker room empties out, sits down on the floor with her cup of coffee, plenty of sugar, cross legged, and takes off her Night Vision Goggles.

Tilly Henderson is sitting across from her on the floor, puffing a vape.

"Sutton," he says. "Yo." An enormous cloud of grapefruit-flavored fume drifts into her face. "I've been trying to get your attention for like. A week."

She tears up a little. "I missed you too, Tilly."

"Yeah, yeah, save me the embarrassing stuff. Of course you did. Listen. You don't have much time."

"I know, the game starts in like--"

"No, I mean, _you don't have much time_. Storm's coming."

"What....does that mean?" Feedback is bad, but all she's been able to sense has been that, and they've played in feedback before.

"I can't fucking say. Ghost shit. You'd probably blab it all if I did. But like, shit's gonna go down. In a real way."

"Then why?" Sutton rubs her eyes to dash back the tears. "Why'd you do it, Tilly? We need you. I-- I need you. Even if you do owe me fifteen dollars. Why'd you have to end up like Combs?"

His expression-- does something it's never done before. And she's been pretty close to Tilly, despite the fact that he'd always called her a worse loser than Loser. It softens?

"I did it for you," he says.

"You did it on purpose."

"I did. For you."

She balls up her fists. "What does that MEAN?"

"Birds told me. Storm's fucking coming. And they said if I did it, you'd be safe. She'd be free."

"She--" Her mind races. There's only person that could mean.

"Listen. Fucking listen for once, Sutton. Get your head in the game. There's some bad shit coming up. I can't say. But we don't want her in that shell. Peanuts? Bad news. More than usual, I mean."

"So you sacrificed-- yourself--"

He grins. Cocky, insufferable. "Yeah, I mean. Somebody's gotta save you guys, you sure can't do it on your own. I wouldn't just leave her in there-- even if she is a shitty, overrated player."

"Tillman you're stupid, and an asshole."

"That's what she said." He takes another puff.

"Hey, Dreamy!" It's a voice from out in the hall; Parker, it sounds like. "Game's about to start!"

"Hey, you gotta go thrash those Jands."

"Tillman, I miss you."

She hadn't realized it. Or maybe she had. Close as she'd been to anyone but the big C, that fucking asshole of a Henderson, always there, always a constant, even when he'd stopped pitching. A Season 1 Baltimore Crab. Her friend.

"Hey, we'll be okay. We're the Crabs, right? Crabs bad. We always lose."

"That's not a good thing."

"Maybe it is."

"Dreamy!"

"I have to--"

"When 'Gomi gets out, remind her for me that she's not all that hot, right? And, uh--" he reaches out, puts a hand on her shoulder. It's gauzy, immaterial. "Do it for Combs, huh?"

She sniffles. "Do it for Combs."

Parker has to come into the locker room and drag her out by the elbow, goggles around her neck, coffee abandoned on the floor. The game starts. She plays with just her eyes, this time. Hoping to catch a glimpse of him, of anyone, even Nora.

She doesn't. Just hears an echo in her ear, from shortstop when she's standing out in left field. Storm's coming.

And Sutton Dreamy isn't the best hitter, or the best outfielder, or the quickest at Basecrimes, in Internet League Blaseball or even on her own team. But she figures. She figures, if she's right about this, if he was right-- if something's coming that they can't prepare for, and she knows...

Well, that makes her the perfect blaseball player. The Platonic ideal. The best there ever was, or else the worst.


End file.
